‘Play like a dog biting God’s feet’: Steven Isserlis on the formidable György Kurtág at 100

I vividly remember my first meeting with György Kurtág. It was 40 or so years ago at the International Musicians Seminar in Prussia Cove, Cornwall. I was sitting in the dining hall there, when a man with grizzled hair and an unusually fervent countenance came up to me and, with barely any introduction, started talking about my pizzicato playing in a performance he’d heard of the Schubert quintet some years earlier, in which I’d taken the second cello part. This man was none other than Kurtág – accompanied then, as almost invariably during those years, by his wife Márta; she hung back somewhat, but didn’t miss a word. (…)

Steven Isserlis’s full article can be read on The Guardian’s website.